Georges Sorel

“It is to violence that Socialism owes those high ethical values by means of which it brings salvation to the modern world.”

“The myth must be judged as a means of acting on the present.”

“The optimist in politics is an inconstant and even dangerous man, because he takes no account of the great difficulties presented by his projects.”

“Hate is able to provoke disorders, to ruin a social organization, to cast a country into a period of bloody revolutions; but it produces nothing.”

“Men who are participating in a great social movement always picture their coming action as a battle in which their cause is certain to triumph.”

“Utopias have always been conceived as a means of escape from the present.”

“Our myths are not descriptions of things, but expressions of a determination to act.”

“Proletarian violence, carried on as a pure and simple manifestation of the sentiment of class struggle, appears thus as a very fine and very heroic thing.”

“The strike is a phenomenon of war.”

“Experience has shown that the man who is truly a man is he who will not submit to force.”

“It is clear that the myth is in every respect identical with the convictions of a group.”

“People who have never really applied themselves to anything, are not in a fit state to understand what is meant by a 'law'.”

“To proceed by way of metaphors is not a very sure method, but it is sometimes the only one at our disposal.”